TrueLife - Benjamin C. George - On The Topic of Role Playing A.I.

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

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Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, you ask for it? I know who you are out there. You asked for more Benjamin C. George and I have delivered. I got the one and only Benjamin C. George back. see George back on the true life podcast.

I know you're excited. We're going to get into some interesting things today. It's always an incredible time with the one and only Mr. Wizard. We're going to get into this idea that he's got that he's been playing on, this role-playing AI is going to get into. I'm sure current events and the world unfolding around us, before I start going too deep into the world of George, let me just introduce everybody back to the world of the other George.

Benjamin C. George. How's it going, my friend? Another day in Paradise, brother. How are you doing? I'm living the dream, brother. I am out here in Hawaii, living the dream. You know, before we get too deep into this, though, let me just, why don't you just maybe refresh people's mind

about who you are, the books that you've written, the No Absolute podcast, the, you know, just give people a little bit of a foundation so they know who you are. Well, I'm just a traveling wizard, you know. I don't know what you're talking about, George. Benjamin C.George.com. I wrote a book, No Absolutes.

kind of a philosophical take on my theory of information. That's a bit more of the scientific side of things. And yeah, these days I just do a lot with automation, artificial intelligence, things like that. And, you know, trying to solve the world problems. You know, it's a little at the time, whatever, have some time. Well said. And for those that are just tuning in, Benjamin C. George was running a special. I don't know if he's still doing it now, but for all,

True Life podcast listeners. He used to run this special where if you went to his website, he would give you a PDF of his book for free if you're willing to commit to giving him some info about it. Are you still running that promo, Ben? Yeah. If anybody wants to read the book and give me a review, they can have it for free. I would recommend that. You know, I think that's kind of how we met up.

Like, I remember reading your book and the infographics in your book were mesmerizing to me. It was the first time I had really seen. the way in which I don't know people have to go and look at these infographics they'll blow your mind they are a really good way of synthesizing the synthesis the senses that makes sense you were able to read

and then see reality and like this weird 3D abstract model that made a lot of sense so I'm just throwing that out there for people to go down and look so you know I decided the other day it was about a week ago I was like you know these these chatbots are getting pretty interesting and I put my book into Google Bard

and I asked it to review my book. Should I pull it up and see what it said? Yeah, that would be amazing. I'll have to find it here one second. So go ahead and do some filling me. Yeah, well, so I didn't even know that Google Bard was this machine that could do book reviews for you. But why not?

I guess all these chatbots are they're only restricted by imagination. in some ways. And so why can't they be a book reviewer? Why can't they be a book writer? Why can't they be a playful interviewer that can banter back and forth with you? They can be pretty much whatever you want them to be, it seems like. Yeah, there's some really interesting things that are happening. And it's going to take me a second to find these. It won't take you too long. Yeah, no worries. I'll just take this moment to talk to people about, what has been going on in the world of my book reading. I recently was rereading Brandon Sanderson for my science fiction fans out there.

And anybody that loves science fiction, Brandon Sanderson has to be one of the best world builders out there. And I don't know. I guess for me, the reason that I love science fiction so much is it seems to be a way in which people are imagining their lives in the future. Which is kind of, you know, the problem, the problem, Ben, that I found about science fiction is that they all seem to be kind of dystopia. You know, there's no real good sort of, look, it's all going to be awesome in the future.

It's all sort of this Philip K. Dick sort of, you know, uh-oh, here comes technology this way. So, I don't know. Any thoughts on science fiction, Ben? Yeah. Well, I guess they're not. So you have like, I saw this graph once. And it's a really interesting graph. And it has like, you know, like science fiction and dystopian. And then you get to a certain like age of, of humankind.

And they turn all utopian. Like you get to like your Star Trek and stuff like that. Right. Right. So there is, you know, but I think it's, we always see our immediate future as dystopian. And our, you know, our distant future. future as utopian in scientific lore, it seems like. Yeah.

Shane Smith, what's up, bud? It's awesome to talk to you, man. Shane Smith says AI is an amazing training tool to help people on the front lines with our customers, seldomly discussed. And it's basically free to implement. Shane, I couldn't agree anymore. In fact, that on some level it's being discussed. And I think it's being discussed in that there will be all these jobs lost.

But I think they're looking through the wrong lens, right? It seems to me that it is an incredible tool. And you basically can have your own think take. You can have your own customer service. You can solve real problems in real time with all of these AI tools out there. What are your thoughts, Ben? Yeah. I think while there is going to be a lot of job loss,

I think we're going to see kind of a repurposing of society, you know, a repurposing of the day to day. and out of necessity, right? Because now you do have something that can run 24 hours a day, can solve problems, can start to, you know, not necessarily innovate on its own, but with just a little bit of the right nudging in the right direction and certainly can't. Yeah, so I found this here. Okay, let's check it out.

All right. So it says, no absolute, it's a framework for life is a book by Ben George that proposes a new way of thinking about the world. The book argues that we should abandon the ideas of absolute truth and instead embrace the validity and uncertainty of life. George believes that this new framework can help us to live more fulfilling and meaningful lives. The book is divided into three parts, this is according to Google Barton, on you, finding the path. This part introduces the concept of no absolutes and discusses the reasons why we should adopt

this new way of thinking. The nature of things, this part explores the implications of no absolutes on our understanding. of reality, consciousness, and free will. A framework for life, this part provides practical guidance on how to apply no absolutes to our lives. George argues that no absolutes can help us to reduce conflict and suffering by abandoning the idea of absolute truths. We can be more open-minded and tolerant to different perspectives. This can help to reduce conflict and suffering in our personal lives and in the world at large. this is almost done live more authentic lives by embracing a fluidity of life we can be more true to

ourselves and live our lives according to our own values and beliefs this can lead to greater happiness and fulfillment and create a better future by adopting more holistic and interconnected view of the world we can work together to create a more sustainable and equitable future for all no absolutes is a thought-provoking and challenging book that offers a new way of thinking about the world. It is a must read for anyone who is interested in expanding their horizons and living a more fulfilling life. I love it,

man. I think that's a great summary. Yeah, it was fascinating. The bot actually got the book. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's showing a whole other level of breaking things down

into a human context in a way. Maybe that shouldn't be so surprising if it's if it's you know coded by humans like why wouldn't it break it down that way but it just seems like it's really on point man yeah well it's interesting you know it's um you know i guess we kind of take for granted you know what our capacity is the kind of reason right you know all the things are all of our learned experiences all of our genetics all of our environment, all of these things are all built into this, this, where we get just kind of this

instant flow of, you know, reality. Meanwhile, these things can take the grand total of all of that and sift through it and then pull something together. So you're talking, and it's not all of, it's not the summation by any stretch of the imagination of human experience, right? Because it's all kind of translated through texts and pictures and videos and, you know, obviously misses emotion and, you know, other things that are pretty integral to understanding, you know, morals and ethics and things like that. So it's still a step away from artificial general intelligence, but we can talk about that. Yeah. A little bit later. But yeah, so you're essentially getting kind of like a representation, a reflection of humanity of what these models.

models have been trained on at least as a subset of humanity. And so, you know, that becomes a very interesting thing too, because now with all of the regulation that's happening and all of the explosion of AI, you have, you know, almost an arms race that's been created. You got a lot of big companies open sourcing things. You got a lot of people privatizing things. You've got Twitter throwing up stuff. You got Facebook throwing up stuff.

You got Google throwing it up. You got open AI. You got all these different hats in the ring now. And now the governments are, you know, coming and peeking around. And so I think what's going to happen is the cat's out of the bag. You can't put it back in. But all of a sudden, you know, these things can be really so foundationally changing to how even small communities could be ran. Imagine if you had one of these AI models.

and you have it loaded in with all sorts of mechanical schematics for everything from your solar and wind generator to the inverter to all of this stuff. And something breaks on your homestead. Now, you can take a picture of what's broken. Load it into this AI model. It can analyze all of that. It tells you exactly what part you need, how to fix it, and, you know, and in the steps on how to do that. now all of a sudden you don't need a guy right yeah um so there's a lot of great benefit potential for for uh just individual you know kind of uh liberty uh if it's applied the right way and then

there's also the opposite of that as well and i think you know uh 2024 is going to be a really interesting ride when it comes to all of that yeah it really is it's You know, it brings up this interesting idea, too, about accelerationism. And when I think of accelerationism, I think of Sam Altman and this whole thing that kind of went down with this chat GPT, right? Like all of a sudden, he had this open AI platform and then this guy that was the founder gets kicked out. Like, what the heck's going on here? This guy that the brainchild got kicked out? Hey, wait a minute.

He's in bed with Microsoft. Hey, wait a minute. This is an open platform. this money on here. You know, so I kind of dove down that rapid hole a little bit. And while I don't know a whole lot about it, what really was fascinating to me was this idea that it seems to me, Sam Altman is a bit of an EAC guy. And for those that may not know EAC, that's like this acceleration. Like we got to get we're going to get automated AI running full steam, full steam ahead, move fast, break stuff. That seems to me to be the course on which Sam Altman is on. Not

like he's trying to do it violently, not like he's trying to crash stuff, but it seems to me the EAC mindset is that the best way we get the world running and efficient and effective in a more fair world is by accelerating AI to a level where everybody has it. Now, it seems to me that the argument against that is, hey, wait a minute, you have no idea how bad people are and they're going to destroy the world if we give them this kind of stuff. Does that seem about like the EAC versus the altruism sort of debate there been? Or what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think they actually, and he, if I recall, take it even a step further. I think the idea is that you accelerate it so fast to the point where it can outcompete any competition and essentially by that measure creates some form of utopia, but thereby, because it would thereby, you know, eliminate the need for work, human labor essentially.

I think that's kind of like their end goal. But, you know, therein lies the problem, too, is, yeah, who holds the keys to all of them? And who's to say it's then human labor? I mean, if the wrong person holds the keys to that, or, you know, if somebody else, because of all your advancements, cracks this open too and builds something that's aggressive and, you know, attacks and kills your little nice utopian. be an AI. What do you do then? This is a story that's been played out in humanity, you know, since the invention of tools, right? Yeah. And so this is just another tool.

Now granted, this tool does have some very interesting capacities that previous tools haven't had. And it does have access to all previous tools, which makes it probably even more dangerous than anything we've ever built potentially. But at the same time, yeah, it's not going away. So now the question becomes, what do you do? And I think, you know, any smart, like, researcher at this point is probably started to pick up this stuff and has started to play with it because the writing is clearly on the wall. It's definitely not going away.

And so now I think you're going to, you know, now it's going from, you know, the breakthrough to the people who can actually do something with it. The engineering mob, you know, all of these tinkers, all of these people who have been, you know, putting code on GitHub for 25 years or, you know, the past 15 years, however long GitHub's been up now. You know, things like that, you know, people who are stack exchange gurus and stuff like that. because here's what it is. So in, you know, and I'm just working on this in a few hours at a time here and there. But you can load a large language model on a local computer. You can then connect that large language model as a server, just like a chat GPT is out there, and connect all sorts of different things to that server.

For instance, one thing that I have is a program that's called AutoJet. And what that does is it allows you to create two different profiles and user profiles and tell these large language models, hey, I want you to basically play out a scenario, run a story for me. I want you to assume the role of, in my case, I've done a project manager and a coder. And then you basically put them in a group chat is essentially what happens. And you give them a task. and they have the ability to, you know, write the code, execute the code, refix the code, and it becomes a conversation back and forth

between these two user profiles that you set up. And they're defined by characteristics like, hey, I'm a world-class coder that, you know, you could even say it has worked at Google or whatever if you wanted to. And so you set these defined kind of characteristics and roles for these different users and allow them to talk back and forth, essentially play out a story. And then, but the result of that is that story actually has real world implications as it's actually writing a real program and running a real program and doing something in the real world through that interaction of things. Now, you can ask it to write the program in the same way, but you actually get better results when it has a conversation with itself. That's so amazing.

In this particular scenario, what kind of code are you having? it right? It's, well, this, I've done quite a few things. I've done simple stuff, but now it's doing a complex one of connecting to Twitter and essentially sending a hello world message. So if you see a hello world message on my Twitter account anytime soon, the AI did it. And have you experimented with changing the personalities of those? And does that affect the model? Yeah, it does. So you can, you can, you know, make the coder snarky, you know, like he's kind of, you know, his shit doesn't stink, so to speak. And you can actually say that, like, as a characteristic for him. And then what you can do with another program called MMP, GPT, is you can actually look under the box of what these different user profiles, these different personalities are thinking.

not what they're actually interacting with each other as, but what they're thinking individually to have those interactions. And so, you know, if you make him resentful or whatnot, he'll actually, you know, he'll be like, oh, yeah, the project manager, he always asked for this even though I'm always right. And that thought will actually, that'll be part of that little play

that this large language model is playing out. Man, it just, it makes me think that, while we're getting to use this technology now, people like Palantir have had this technology probably for the last decade. And if they've had this much technology for the last decade, how much of this is, like why wouldn't you be running full simulations

about how populations work? So, well, so here's the thing. They may or may not have, obviously. You know, there's all sorts of stuff that's developed in private sector that takes decades to reach public. We know that.

However, you know, it really wasn't until the advent, of this kind of this thing called the transformer that really allowed because before this, if you remember the buzzword was always neural network, right, and machine learning. And the idea was that we're just loading all this data and connections and machine learning that's changing all these weights and giving us better and better answers. It wasn't until the advent of the transformer that allowed kind of like this large language model to develop where we kind of get the sense of reasoning almost a little bit through this

and whatnot. So that was 2017, if I recall. Interesting. Yeah, it's to William the South point right here, an AI could fit, an AI could fit right in with families that are a little unusual. I mean, I mean, you started thinking about transform or you started thinking about trans people, you know, in some sort of strange way. What does that mean, though? Ben like, okay, so if we take this, this example of the transformer, these large language models,

and this idea of 2024, you know, with this election coming up, we know what happened during the last election. Well, we have, people have ideas of what happened during the last election. What we know for sure is that the last election saw an incredible amount of influence through different bots. what do you think may happen now with this new advent with technology?

Like what are some things that could be on the horizon for that? You know, it's almost one of those things where you don't want to speak it into existence. Let's speak it into existence. Let's do it. I don't know. Well, so here's the thing. The example I just gave you, if all of a sudden on my Twitter, you see a hello world message pop up, that was something that did not require me. me, I had to set up the whole thing, but assume it's all set up.

That didn't require anything of me as a coder, me as a programmer, of me as a project manager, of me as a designer, or anything like this. And it could make a front end for it. It could do all of these things. It could also say, hey, every time somebody sends you a direct message, I want you to load that and hold that direct message into an individual chat, and I want you to chat with those people. Now this is a large language model. It's forte is chatting with people, right? Now all of a sudden you have this thing that could carry on thousands of conversations from a single account looking

by and large pretty real, especially if you, so there's this thing called fine tuning in all of these large language models that you can download and fine tune yourself, which essentially allows me to, you know, when asked certain questions, give these types of responses, don't give these types of responses, or, you know, when approached in this type of aggressive manner, react this way. And so you could really finely tune and tailor kind of a personality, if you will, that would interact with all of these people and wouldn't really ever seem off the rails or would really just kind of push a propaganda point or would really, you know, you could even have it be subtle and try to, you know, persuade people, you know, because think about it,

it has pretty much every bit of persuasive literature ever written. If it's given the proper framework to build and have these conversations and create this little role play story world that it essentially would be having with a human now and you create that proper framework, you know, unless you actually knew that that was real, it would be really hard to tell these days. Man. Yeah, it's mesmerizing to think of the parameters you could put in there. Like, hey, find me, look for young men between or look for men between the ages of 15 and 40 that watch this particular type of porn that seem to have misplaced anger and then have them all meet up over here. You know, or maybe then you could, you could, you could, you could, you could sprinkle in.

the subtle nuance of pick your ism. You know what I mean? And just get that going. And it's, it's interesting to think. But on some level, that's always been the case. On some level. Right. But, but now, now you're essentially changing the weight of the equation.

Okay. Where, where it used to be, you know, A plus B plus C equals D. Now you're getting it's a plus C times 10,000 plus D. or plus C equals D. So those two Ds are not the same anymore. So, you know, yeah, it can be one of those things where, and, you know, look, we got plenty of examples of people mistreating things. So why assume that they wouldn't?

But we have, you know, it's one of those things where you could easily sway opinion, especially in, you know, localized fashion. Just imagine this thing. joining a local Facebook group or community group, right? You know, your little town there, right? Your town's group. And it's posting pictures that are from the local town because it has access to all those, posting write-ups about the local politicians and whatever way it's trying to sway

because it has access to all that. And now the cost of doing this used to be kind of mediated by labor. And keeping a secret and all of those other things. AI keeps a pretty damn good secret. Yeah. Yeah, and it's the, quite often you hear about people worried about misinformation. Oh, it's misinformation.

It's misinformation. But the same people that are worried about it are the very people that are implementing it. You know, I'm not sure if anybody really wants it to go away. Because the second it goes away, now you lose all your influence, you know. And it's like, these guys, that's misinformation. Everybody is just like misinformation is a joint finger is a giant finger pointing at the other person and they both hide behind it. You know, so I don't know that you can ever get away from it and you see you know, maybe maybe what people in positions of authority are really afraid of is that, you know, the A squared plus B squared equals C squared is a functional model.

But if you have A squared plus B squared and you can't solve for another one, if you can't solve for a variable, now you don't know what's going to happen. Now all this money you've invested could be pointless because you could lose to the long shot that was the 15 horse or something like that.

Because anybody can do it, right? A kid that's 15 could come up with a chat bot that's way more influential than Cambridge Analytica did. You know, they may have paid some dummy over there, millions of dollars, and here comes George from Hawaii. to just put in a little chat bot

and now he's running the game. Yeah, I don't think it would be quite so simple, but there is a certain degree of risk exposure that they are now exposed to because of all these things. And, you know, every empire in history does

not like being exposed to risk. That's kind of how it is, right? And they go way out of their ways to mitigate risk, including so much as to run propaganda campaigns. And I I think we'd be hard pressed to find any sort of empire kingdom in history that hasn't ran any sort of propaganda campaign against their populace, let alone other people. So, yeah, it's one of those things that, you know, they're kind of part and parcel to one another.

At least they have been throughout the breadth of human history. And so to expect it to just change when the new brightest, shiny, as big as badass as tool just hit the market. Yeah. I don't know, man. I don't have my hopes for that one. Yeah. It's interesting to see it. For those people,

paying attention, like if you, if you want to see the propaganda show, just turn on your television, turn on the radio. It's everywhere. You know, and especially during an election year,

like you see a really ramp up. And in some ways, it's, I'm always fascinated by it. Like, it's a train wreck that you can't turn away from. Wow, that was very influential.

Or, wow, they're really pulling on the heartstrings of these people that are victims over here. You know, and it's it's so despicable in some ways, but also so shiny in other ways. Well, we're, you know, we have a natural inclination to disaster, right? Back to how we started the conversation. Yeah.

You know, our immediate future in terms of all of our science fiction literature and all of our fiction literature for, you know, science fiction or not, you know, even like when we're talking about a time in the past in fiction stuff for even fictional locations it's yeah most often a disaster situation isn't it yeah you know a harry potter is well there's the big bad guy who's coming to end everything you know you got lord is the rings big bad guy coming and everything you know it's and so we kind of live in this bubble of of disaster it's kind of an interesting phenomenon if you think about it i had a point i forgot why i was going Well, I was just, you know, when we talk about the election year, we talk about bubbles of disaster and propaganda, it's interesting to see the debate that's happening with X right now when you see, I don't know, I'll watch this Elon Musk versus kind of Disney sort of thing play out.

I forgot where I was, but Elon Musk had a really long interview where he was speaking to a, a guy and they were talking about all the problems with, with free speech and talking about all these problems. And a lot, during that conversation, it came up that Disney had pulled all their sponsorship and all these people were pulling sponsorships from X because they didn't like Elon Musk allowing people to go on

and say whatever they wanted to say. And in that interview, it's really candid. He pretty much told Bob I go, like, fuck off then, man. Like, I'll pull all your money. That was pretty amazing. I kind of like to see that.

Like, let's see. some real debate. Let's see what happens behind the scenes. Hey, you know what? That was the American spirit back in the day. Yeah, I agree. It really was. Now, you could argue for better or for worse, but, you know, applied at the right time, certainly for better. Yeah. You know, and I think there's, there's a lot to be said about, you know, just because some, you know, just because we've always done something a certain way, definitely doesn't mean we should continue doing that way. doing it that way. I think that's actually probably one of the most absurd things

if we were just to look in relation to what nature is, what humanity is, what all this stuff is, it's all about change. And you want to be a stick in the mud? You're going to get buried like every other stick in the mud throughout all the fucking time. Yeah. Yeah.

Change is painful. And especially to the people that are on top when change comes. They're the last people that want to change. What do you mean you want to change? We're crushing it. They got it made in the shade. Yeah. I thought it was an ultimate.

So that conversation comes up. And then a week later, they bring Alex Jones back onto Twitter. You know, you can just kind of see them just changing blows right there. Like, oh, you don't want me. You don't like me having this. Okay, how about that? You like that? You're going to pull all your money.

Okay, I just bring all these people back that you hate. You know, it's pretty interesting to see it. Here's a really interesting thing. Make a prediction of who's going to win that battle. It's going to be X. Yeah. And for the exact reason we were just talking about. It's the disaster.

It's nothing but a fucking train wreck every single day. Yeah. You know what? Are you going to watch the, you know, the highlights about the weather? Or you're going to watch the train wreck? Are you going to watch somebody's spit take about what happened yesterday? Are you going to watch the train wreck? You're going to watch a train wreck for all any scenario you can imagine.

Again, because we're attracted and we're encompassed in this disaster bubble. right and and so yeah you know I think ultimately X wins that at the end of the day me too like if we just take it from a purely information entertainment

call it propaganda call it information call it attention getters whatever you want to call it but are you going to watch Israel invaded Hamas are you going to watch Alex Jones be like these lizards came over here

and what they're going to do with the WEF is take all you're like like look I don't like I think Alex Jones is a little bit more of like he's more entertaining than watching Israel and Hamas I agree with you but but here's the thing X wins because they don't even have to make that choice they don't side the one side the one side has made the choice that all we're going to do is this the other side says we're going to do it all yeah where are people going to gravitate towards abundance or lack of abundance. And it's always abundance. Okay, so this brings up a whole fascinating angle too.

Like I feel we are moving into this world of abundance. You know, for so long, it seems to me that we've been under the thumb of this idea of scarcity. And it's been something we've all been conditioned in and schools. Hey, man, you got to go there and you got to work this particular job or you got to go to school for this long to get. this to get in this box so that you can have this much money. And it seems to me like that particular scaffolding is falling away. If you just use X as an example, they do have abundance. What do you want to watch?

You want to watch fear porn. You want to watch regular porn. You want to watch war. You want to watch history. It's all right there, man. They have all of it. And then you have these other people that are like, we're just going to do Disney movies. We're going to do this.

And they're like, we have all of it, man. Come over here. Yeah, we've got all of it. When you look at it from that angle, you can see the old establishment falling away because they're irrelevant. They've chosen not to change. They've chosen not to be all. It's chosen to be scarce.

And it's really, you know, it's really kind of comical because, you know, just in the entertainment industry alone, within the lifetimes of everybody who's working in it,

this story has already played out. We went from local news stations to buy it all in cable. Yeah. To, you know, cut the cord to now you're, now we're all,

So these cycles just continue. And you could look at it even from the sense of magazines and television, movies, and all of those things related in a larger timeline. And so, you know, it's not like the writing is not on the wall. You know, it's just because these people get greedy and they try to gouge people. That becomes the cycle. And, you know, when you try to gouge people morally and ethically and, you know, remove their liberty and freedom, sure now you're really going to move the needle when it bounces when that pendulum bounces back the other direction

you know it brings up this idea that like are for me i'm just speaking from my experience but it seems to me like we need to rethink what is valuable like it seems to me for so long things that were scarce were valuable like this is a scarce resource so it's valuable but how does that change when we have abundance. Like, it changes the value, right? Well, you're assuming we get to abundance, but let's assume we get to abundance. Okay.

Yeah, you know, value absolutely is constantly in a state of change, right? You know, value, you remember, keeping up with the Joneses. Value has been materialism and consumerism for driven for, you know, since at least the 80s when it really kicked off. but now all of a sudden, you know, goods became cheap, you know, not only cheap in the sense of cost, but cheap in the sense of there's just so much. How many TVs does everybody have? How many cell phones says everybody has?

You know, there's just so much. So it's just, it's a cheap factor. It's no order of something special, right? And I think that, you know, we're going to, well, where was I going with that? What were we talking about? Damn it. We were talking about I was assuming abundance and that the value change. Right.

So in that system, you know, value is going to necessarily, is going to necessity change. We're going to filter back into what we're already seeing. Value is authenticity. Value is the real conversation. Value is, you know, the, the intert-the things that really, you know, are entertaining and bring joy to your life. Value is nature for a lot of people. You're watching a lot more people go back outside for the first time in, you know, years since the screens of invaded life, right? Yeah.

You got all sorts of movements in that direction. We got all sorts of we talk about all the time in terms of psychedelics, you know. Yeah. So I think the value judgment that society places on things is definitely already changing and it has been changing. I think it's probably been changing since the advent of the Internet, really. Yeah. Because that's, you know, that that just mass sharing of information, that that worldwide communication just kind of took us to a point where, you know, you just have access to everything. You didn't have to know the obscure book. You didn't have to go to a library. You didn't have to do anything. And then all of a sudden it wasn't just text and information. Then it's entertainment and shopping and all of these things. And so and now we're at the stage of AIs, right? and content creators and individuals being able to have a conversation 1,600 miles away from each other in real time and share it with the world.

Value is definitely changing in society. So there's another interesting phenomenon that I'm thinking about, and it's this idea of value in community. And what does that mean for supply chains? Like, you know, my wife buys a lot of stuff from Timo, which is like this Chinese. Amazon. You can get stuff. I got a I got a I don't have it here in front of me, but I got a everybody knows Yeti. I got a cold cup and it's like the exact same. Instead of Yeti it says cold. And it was for eight bucks man. I got a I got a Yeti cold for eight bucks. I recently went to the Yeti store in the Alamawana, which is like this giant, giant mall that has like all the big

brands and stuff there. You go in first off, I like Yeti. I think that they have cool products. But I go into their store and I'm like, okay, they have like a 1,500 square foot place. I guarantee you that it's probably $6,000 a month minimum for that little place, minimum. A lot more than that probably. Probably closer to 15 or 20. Like it's a premier mall. It's right on the water. And so I'm thinking to myself like, okay, yeah, no wonder they're selling something like this cup for like 40 bucks.

You know, but if I can go on. All the overhead. all of it, right? It's like, wow, okay. But if I can go on, if I can get it from the same factory in China for like six bucks, you start looking at just that model and you start thinking about like, oh, globalization, supply chains. And you realize like how much longer can all these big business even stay in business

when I can go to Timo when I can go to the Chinese supplier and buy that exact same product for six bucks? So I guess the point I'm trying to get at is value in supply chains. Like how is that changing the world, Ben? Value of goods. That's what I was, that's what I was referencing is the value we place in goods in materialism is going away. Because now it's everybody's had all the TVs.

We have all the phones. We have all this stuff. To your point there, now you can get it at a fraction of the cost of, you know, what even you can, you would think it, you should even pay for it.

And you go, huh, well, if it's so cheap and it's so ubiquitous, it's definitely not special. That's kind of, that's the value judgment our brain makes. It's not a conscious thing necessarily. Right. But, you know, it's a logical thing, right? Right. You don't, we don't have to worry about it because, you know, we're kind of geared still from an evolutionary perspective to, you know, if we see scarcity, we hoard it.

Right. Because that means that it might be a rough winter. right? Yeah. But if all of a sudden we see abundance, we're not pluffed. You know, it doesn't matter. So, so I think that same thing is actually playing itself out in materialism. Right. And so I think that's definitely one of the undercurrents that's leading to the value changes in society. And I think one of those value changes, maybe to what you're trying to get to, is community. And I think we're going to start to see the return of community. because we've watched community basically be annihilated over the past 30 years.

Yeah. I can't tell you my neighbor's names. Right. I doubt many people could. It's just that's not how the world is anymore. But I think that value is going to change because now it is back to authenticity. It is about people's value. What they bring to the table is not, you know, not necessarily like,

in a survival sense or anything like that. But what they bring to the table is, hey, you know, we can have better lives if we work together and, you know, shared our little fence space over here and made a garden. What are you there? Oh, yeah, sure. And because, you know, now the tools and the ability to do all of these things are so cost effective. And, you know, all of the kind of legal frameworks and all of this stuff are kind of in play and all of these new advanced tools from a technological perspective like AI.

to help these situations are all here. Now you're going to, I think we're going to see a shift back towards two community. And I think that's going to coincide with something we've talked about before, but which is kind of like the fracturing of nation states. There's an interesting dichotomy I hear, though, because I have all these incredible friends and people that I've been meeting from around the world. And I'm like, I found my tribe and they're everywhere. You know, but at the same time, like, I do.

see all these tools to make my community better. And I want to value the things that people are making in my community. I still value the reach of the people I have around the world. And in some ways, I feel closer to you than I do my neighbor, man.

We have incredible long conversations than I do with my neighbor. I love my neighbors, and I can name all of them. Well, good for you. It's you special. I know. I don't call me a fragor. I go talk to all. I know their kids. Oh, wow. this guy, Mr. Community over here.

Like a good neighbor, George is there. But yeah, isn't that an interesting thing, though, because I do see the bridging of community coming together, but at the same time, like, there's this global community growing too. I guess that, is that factor into the fracturing of nation states as well? Right. Because I think, you know, the more and more that people start to see people's people. Oh, okay. You know, the more and more.

you get that, that just, that just spreads out. You know, it's like a ripple in a pond. Right. It's, you know, it's just going to continue to spread and spread and spread. And yeah, it's going to be less and less about, you know, religions and skin colors and locations and more or more about, hey, you have the same interests, same philosophy, you have the same outlook on life. You've researched these things too. And wow, maybe we should have, maybe we should get a little bit more serious about, you know, maybe let's do something. Let's talk about it at least. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And more and more of that will happen. And because of, you know, just this interconnected, you know, continually more interconnected global community where we can actually do more than just chat to

each other and a text little message, we can get a feel for each other. We've never met person, George, but we've had great conversations. We've had heart to heart conversations. We've spent hours bullshitting. And as more and more of that continues to pervade culture and more and more people look at, you know, content creation and podcasting and all of these things is not even necessarily a means to an end in life,

but as a part of life, that's going to really kind of just push the momentum in the direction of why do we need this big umbrella a thing that's really just kind of, you know, it's taken a lot of resources from us. Right. And at the end of the day, it doesn't look like it's given as much back as it used to. And, and, you know, that's being very fair about the situation. You can be a bunch more critical of the situation. And I think that that range of fairness to criticality combined with all

these other factors is going to, you know, people are going to start asking, well, why are we doing this? And I don't think it has to be a violent why. I think it could be a very just kind of epiphanific. Epiphanific. Epiphanific. Why? Damn it. I thought I had that word. Oh, well. Oh, well. Yeah. you know if if they wanted to have a war and no one showed up what would happen right exactly I don't feel like going to war today guys do you yeah not really so why are you upset oh we were just bummed out about this this little thing over here

oh that thing oh I don't care about that thing all right see you yeah yeah taxes what do you mean I'm not paying those that's ridiculous I'm not gonna pay those come on Well, that's the thing. Well, and back to the, and this is why I think it's not, doesn't have to be some big civil war blown out big thing. I think so it goes back to the shifting of value in society. And as that value continues to shift into community, now all of a sudden the question becomes, well, why are we sending all this money over here where we could actually take this money and we know we all want to do the same thing with it and do it right here?

as soon as that becomes clear and present for groups of people, you know, that's kind of probably the beginning of the end of that, of things when it comes to big nation states. That's not to say that they go away just like overnight or it's like some big dramatic dystopian thing. It's just that there'll probably be struggles and hardship. Sure, change is hard. But at the end of the day, I think it's one of those things where it's, you know, it'll just be. the people who are taking advantage of the system, they're going to have the largest hardships. Yeah.

But the people who have been honest with and, you know, been operated with integrity and have, you know, done the right thing by their neighbor and with moral and ethical existence, they're going to come out just fine, smiling like a climb, happy on the other end. Yeah, I think so too. It's, you know, it's, I heard a good quote one time. that was something along the lines of

when the people realize that the economy depends on them that's when the economy changes and on some level we're beginning to understand that it was better than that but it was something along the lines of like

you know look the economy can't function without us and that should be an epiphymistic what is the word that should be an epiphypithinistic I'm making it up. It's a new word, so as far as I know.

We have to put it in a Google Bard and figure it out. But yeah, like once enough people come to that conclusion, like, oh, it can't function without us. Okay, well, then we control it. Okay, well, we don't want to do this anymore. You know, and on some level you can see that happening. Probably that might be why everyone is so worried. People in positions of authority are so worried about this election. Like this could be the election where we go, you know what, we're not going to do it anymore.

We're going to hear some new ballot initiatives where we're going to keep no more foreign aid. That's just going to stay in our community. We're not going to give that away anymore. Like that can't be that far away, right? Well, it's definitely not going to be 2024 because that's all already bought and paid for. All the people who make those votes have already taken donations to run their campaigns. Right. So, you know, I think that's unlikely.

However, you know, I do see these things kind of. emerging, not at any sort of national, big level, but at local and regional levels. Yeah. Right. I think all of a sudden you're just going to see there'll be a ballot on a local city, the small little town, that's, you know, a few thousand people. And they're going to be like, hey, we're actually going to do away with X, Y, and Z. And we're just going to take control of this for ourselves.

And, you know, that'll be that. And then the states, you know, depending on where you're at, they'll say, oh my gosh are we going to get behind these people or we're going to persecute these people and i think you'll see two both sides of that coin and certain states will be like hey you know we're going to back this and then because of the way the constitution's written you'll have states where you you know taxes are entirely different uh you know cost of living is entirely different uh subsidies aren't paid to certain things where they are other places you know all of that stuff that taxes does that people really once they figure out or kind of disillusioned by,

all that can go away at the state level. And so, and then I think, so that'll kind of be the first little pulse of this, if you will. You know what? On some level, I kind of see that happening in my community.

I want to talk about this project that I've begun to work in, Ben, and get your ideas on it. So we talk about the old system falling away. And I'm involved in this new project called Mahalo Stars. And it aims to, to democratize your information on the internet. So if you look at how much money Google has,

if you look how much money Oracle has, if you look how much money Amazon has, whenever you go on to those pages, you wanna sign up as a seller or something like that, like you know, you're giving away, not only 50% of your project, you know, or 60%, but all the information that comes with, anybody that signs up, like that's all worth money.

Like they say if you're getting a service for free, then you're the product. But let's say, like, this new venture I'm working on, we have a way in which we can give people their information back. So let's say that this particular project takes off and now you can get a micro payment just for surfing, just for going on and talking, creating content. You're going to get a piece of the overall pie. Imagine if Google paid out all their money. Instead of one or two guys owning the equivalent of a small country's GDP, now everybody in that country can get a slice of that. It's almost like a universal basic income without having

to go through the state. And that's pretty profound. If that begins to happen, all of a sudden, the ideas of the state kind of fall away. And you have this sort of uplifting of all boats beginning. And that changes the fundamental way people think. Right. What do you think about that? Yeah.

So this is an emerging thing that I see a lot of. And there's, I'm an advisor for another company called Cyber Elite, who is doing a similar idea where they are essentially all. all of these gamers and all these people playing video games, all of that, all of that human movement is, is valuable data. Now what you can do with that is stuff like edge computing, right?

You can do protein folding. You can do all of these, all these interesting, you know, experiments with all of this randomized data from users. So now they're looking at paying gamers for gaming, right? All the time I spent gaming. And so there, and there's a,

couple other outfits that I've seen that are doing similar things where um because the reality of the situation is you know like we're talking about the value is shifting in society and part of that value shift is hey Google why the fuck are you worth billions of dollars and I'm still getting NSF fee charges on my checking account and that's a serious question at the end of the day and and so that serious question is birthing a serious answer and that serious answer is going to be a foundational shift if it's done properly and it will eventually be done properly because if you think about it, it's a volume game. So if you get all the people on board, you win, you know, you win the game and they win the game. And because of such a win-win proposition, you know, you're just going to

out-compete your competition, your Googles in the marketplace. And so I, you know, I, you know, think, you know, and this harkens back to a lot of what we've been talking about, about parallel economies and parallel societies and things like this. And these are just going to be one of many, I think, little kind of foundational tools of structure of frameworks of how these different communities, societies, you know, even regions choose to operate. Yeah. It's, you know, on some level, I'm reminded of the first Apple commercial where they show like all these IBM guys like Lemmings running off a cliff

isn't it interesting that Apple and Google and Amazon are about to run off the cliff I don't think people see it yet but I think that they are the monoliths that are about to be dethroned at a level you know like it's acceleration happens faster and faster and we got to see these things rise and fall in our lifetime like they haven't fallen yet

but you can see the way in which they're scrambling right now. Oh, yeah. I mean, they'll be still kicking around like an AT&T still kicking around, right? But, you know, nobody even knows what the hell Bell South was or Ma Bell or any of these things that preceded AT&T. And, you know, AT&T is just another mobile carrier these days. They were a giant. They were the giant. Right.

Now they're just, they're still around and still will Google and still will Apple and still these things. I think for quite some time. But I think the powerhouses of society and the movers of the needle that they are today, I don't think that persists for too much longer. Now, I think because as we get to optical and quantum computing, you know, we're talking, you're talking all of this stuff to do what Google's massive data centers do, you know, with acres of land inside your pocket at a certain scale of this stuff. Right. And, you know, once you, and that's again, back to what we were talking about before.

Now it becomes ubiquitous. Now the value in it changes. And so now the value is no longer the most fastest, you know, most processing intense machine because you can only, you only need to process so much data to get these most amazing things that we've developed over here. Those are going to beat the next Googles, the next apples. Yeah. It's, are they just too top? Like, I, I, I, I, I, in my. mind, it seems that the life cycle of maybe it's just life in general, that you grow to a certain point where you can no longer see what you've started, nor can you see innovation, because you've hired all these people to believe in this one thing and you've trained them to see a certain way they can no longer see where it's going. And it's weird to say that about something like Google or Apple who have created all these cool products and they continue to create cool similar products. But like, if those guys were smart and they are smart,

but it seems to me that if you want to be the next fucking gargantuan monolith, that you would be making everyone around you richer instead of just trying to steal from everybody. Like they're just taking everyone's information. Just give back to everybody and you'll stay on top for a fucking longer period of time, right? Well, you have to remember this was all born right after the Cold War. This was all, all of this advent of information technology came right after the greatest, you know, game of secrecy in modern history. And so I think a lot of that carried over into, you know, our society or our business

sense and strategies and just culture in general. And so, but I think, again, as all of these values shift, I think you get rid of the need for this take, take, take philosophy. And because, again, we're 1,600 miles away. having a wonderful conversation, let alone all the people we know around the world who we can plug in at any moment and have that same conversation. And as we get more connected in these things and as we get more tools and we can add more value of resources to the system, you know, we just move we move on.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, it's so complex and too. And I, I guess we're all playing a part in making everyone richer. I think it's a better way to look at it. It's easy to get upset with the large corporations or governments or it's a lot, it's pretty easy to have a lot of misplaced anger. But maybe we're all responsible for making each one of us a little bit richer. Well, what's richer, George?

I think richer is being more fulfilled. If I had to define rich, I would say living a life that's fulfilling. And for me, that's having relationships with people. That is coming to new ideas and learning and getting to. be thought to help in some way. I think that's rich. I think that's rich too, brother. Yeah, me too, man.

Money helps. Money helps. But that's what's going to change in the future too is when we talk about ideas and value, you know, when we look at money as a placeholder for value, that's changing too. If our idea of value changes, then money has to change with it, right?

Those are part and parcel. Right, and it already is. Yeah. Look, you got all these people who have made a lot of money. on a whole bunch of imaginary digital funny money, monopoly money, as J.P. Morgan has famously called it many of times. Yeah. And yet they're making more money than J.P. Morgan's making.

Yeah, they've made funny money, has made J.P. Morgan almost irrelevant. Well, he keeps making a jackass of himself routinely. That's always fun to watch. Yeah. What are some of the things I haven't been paying too much attention? What is he been saying lately? Oh, he always, he comes out every six, eight months or so. and is on some CNBC or something and always trashes Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in some way.

Right. It's been pretty consistent ever since the first little burst of cryptocurrency. They always interview these bankers. What do you think about Bitcoin? And they're like, oh, it's fake internet monopoly money. It's just a hoax. It's a pyramid scheme. It's all of these things. You know, it's kind of funny. I think there was one website that used to track, like how many times the mainstream media had predicted Bitcoin is going to face. and go to zero. It was like in the hundreds or a few years back, if I recall. So, yeah.

It's, you know, I look at it like everybody who is bought into crypto, whether you got scammed or whether you got some coins that worked for you or whether you were able to participate in that crypto market and you were able to buy goods, you couldn't buy goods, I see everybody. And I hope this makes people feel good that may feel like they got burned. Like you contributed into creating a new idea of money. And if you look at it from that angle, you should be proud of yourself. You should be proud of yourself that you fucking took a chance.

Yeah, maybe you got burned. You know what? Maybe you took your retirement money and put 80 grand in there and you turned to $260,000. Then you lost all of it. You got to tell your wife and your family about it. Maybe that happened to you. I don't know. Maybe that happened to some people, man.

But regardless, you contributed to the well-being of humanity. by helping us get rid of the current system we're in. You bought in. You paid your tuition into it, man. I like to look at it from that angle, Ben. You think that's a good angle? Wonderfully said as a cult leader. Wonderful this time.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for your sacrifice while I sit at my golden table. Oh, the things we tell ourselves, you know? Yeah, I'm excited for it, though. I see so many avenues. And beyond that, I think that it's helped,

much like you and I didn't grow up with phones in our pocket. You know, we didn't grow up with cryptocurrencies. And I like to think the next generation grows up with these things that are already growing with them. Like, what does that do for their imagination? Like the next generation is like, oh yeah,

NFT, crypto, Dow, boom. Now they can go over the next thing. You know what I mean? And it's happening so fast. I mean, that's really cool at all. But, you know,

looking back on it, if I had access to an AI like this. Like something, because I've actually, I've given this thing tasks I'm coding. I've watched it code because it'll go line by line. And I'm, and I've watched and I've been like, I just learned something new.

And I've been coding for 20-some years of my life. Granted, I don't consider myself the grandmaster expert of anything. But at the end of the day, you know, learning something new. by this machine doing just its thing completely autonomously that's that's pretty novel and I think if that's actually explored

into education yeah holy crap you want some smart fucking kids buddy it's coming man it's I think AI as a tool on all dimensions is just going to help us become such a better version of ourselves and it's going to do that by explaining that hey you guys are hey dummies look how dumb you are. Learning can be painful. It is perspective. What's well said? Maybe you can maybe expand on that.

Well, I think, you know, if we look at kind of where the boundaries of society and culture has lied historically, it's I think it's pretty easy to surmise that there's always a discrepancy in perspective. Yeah. There's always a difference in the way that one group views, another group and that can be for a whole host of different things i mean it can be something as simple as rivalies in a video game right yeah but there's always these these differences but we don't get to understand that nuance until we're able to see those differences and you can't see those differences without the proper access to information or education wisdom or knowledge in order to you know have the proper worldview, the proper internal model to view these things with, the proper philosophy

to view these things with. And it's through expanding our perspective that we begin to build that proper worldview and that model and connect better with our fellow human being. We start to see people as people and not as anything but, you know, it becomes a people for people network instead of a, you know, me first and then you second network. And I think that that opening of perspective naturally just kind of has a filter that takes a lot of the, you know, isms and it maybe not completely takes them out of society,

but definitely lessens them to a significant degree. I like that, man. I should be in the new book. I'll get my AI assistant on that. Man, yeah, I like the perspective. You know, on the topic of perspective, I've been noticing this trend that's been happening for a while, but for some reason it's on the top of my mind after hearing that.

And that's this idea of the linguistic change that is fundamentally changing the way we see reality, like this verbing of nouns. You know, like we saw it with Google and then now you Google things. And the same way you look at Ben as a person, place, or a thing as a noun, or George as a person, place or a noun, like, might it be Ben as a process? Like, Ben as a noun. Do you bend that? You know what I mean?

Like, or you George that or, but if we begin thinking of nouns as verbs, how does that change the way we see the world? So here's a really interesting thing. And I've been talking about this a lot recently. It's been coming up in a lot of conversations. So there was a study. And what they did is they went and they found some African tribe that was pretty off the map, uncontacted-ish, you know. And they took a color wheel.

And on that color wheel, it had a whole bunch of green squares in one little blue square. And they took it to those people and asked them to find the color blue. And it took them a while to recognize the color blue. blue whereas you and I we would look at the color blue we're like oh yeah that one's blue instantaneously and but the interesting thing is is the reverse is true too when they took a color wheel of all greens but one was a slightly different shade and they presented it to like people in the western world you and I we couldn't under we couldn't understand the different shade we couldn't figure it out it took us longer and some people couldn't even figure it out the takeaway here is is

that if we don't have a word for something, if we don't have a context, a framework for something in our mind, we don't see it. That indigenous tribe had 30-some different names for different colors of green because that's their world. They have to be able to see those different shades. That's how they survive. So for them, they saw that different shade of green instantly. They already knew what it was. They had a word for it, like we have a word for blue, but they didn't have a word for blue. So it takes them longer to process it, longer for them to see it. So without that context, without that framework, we can't see these things. And so to your point about nouns changing into verbs and whatnot, without seeing the world through that perspective, we don't have the ability

to understand the world in that way. And it's not that we can't detect the difference because we will. But it's when we reinforce that difference with, uh, attaching, you know, knowledge and understanding to it in the sense of symbolism, in this case, words, that's when we begin to contextualize it and build it into that internal worldview, that model for the world. And then we can see it. And thereby that affects our behaviors, that affects our choices and everything that we do in the world. Man. You know, it reminds me of psychedelics a little bit in that, you know, you always come up against that, thing that you can't explain without a linguistic pathway you can't comprehend anything right exactly and then you know you go back into you know uh ancient text esoteric esotericism and whatnot you know

what was the first thing in the beginning the word there you go yeah yeah and that you run that forward till today and everything's about narrative control it brings us back to the idea of propaganda in getting people to see things a certain way or understand it from my, look at it from my point of view. No, no, no, no. We have all these funny, interesting ways of articulating this in society,

but we never really think about the importance of the words and how we use them. Yeah. Hence words are important book number two. Eventually sometime in the future. That was a good plug, but I can't get. There's the finger. All right.

It's fascinating to think about. You know, and then you start thinking about, you know, I spoke to the, I spoke to Shana's Sony yesterday, a rocket scientist who came from Pakistan. She spoke about the way in which she came to America through this arranged marriage and how when she went to school to take a test, the, the, everyone was going to take this test for, you know, to see if you could make it in the science program there. but because the son of the local politician was sick that day, they didn't want anybody to take the test.

So they were going to force the school to take the test another day. So the way they did that is they stood outside with guns and were like, we're going to kill anybody that goes in there. That's one way to do it. Yeah, like, I guess we can't take the test today. But she tells this story about how she goes in, she goes in the room. And like the guys like, what do you get the hell out of here? We're going to kill you, you know.

But I guess the reason I'm bringing that up is because the same way they use intimidation to kill people or get people out of schools, they used to cut people's tongues out so they couldn't speak. You know, they still, you know, like if you think about a liar, or you think someone they don't want talk and they cut their tongue out or you take the books away because they don't want people to be educated or have the power. You know, it's interesting to think about it from that angle. Yeah.

And, I mean, that's always kind of been the dichotaping between, you know, rulership and the populace in society. And it's been a tenuous balance. And but if you look over time, the populace has continually won at great expense, but has continually won. And, you know, hence why we're even allowed to talk or to meet and talk to each other and have conversations and speak about the state and all of these things, right? Right. It's interesting. You know, I, it's so like, not, I guess, multipolar on some levels.

it's interesting to be at a state where you can see multiple things happening at once. And one thing I see happening in this world right now is this dichotomy between entitlement and, and like power. On one level, when I see people coming into the workplace and like, I want more money. Like I deserve better. Like I fully agree with me. Like, yeah, you totally do. But are you working hard enough?

You know what I mean? Like it's interesting to see those two points of view. Like these people want more. Like when I put on my hat as a union guy and I'm like, you know what? Fuck these guys, man. We're working 18 hours a day and you're telling me that's eight hours of work. I'm not going to do it anymore. I want more.

And yeah, I should get more. But then you flip it around. And if I'm sitting at a board of directors like, this guy makes $100,000 a year. I think he could do more. You know, like those two things exist at once. And I get it. see both sides of it and I can have empathy for both of them. I don't know where the rubber meets the road because on one level, like you're ready for uprising. The magic is in resolving the

paradox. The wise and man can hold both of those to be true and find the middle path. And there is magic in the middle path. And it's in resolving these apparent paradoxes, these dichotomies of life that that's where we move forward. That's where we take our steps forward, whether that be from a business perspective or group relationships or from just a personal one. Yeah, and I guess that that's why we truly are

at transformative times. Like you can see the world erupting, but might that be a sign of positive change? Hey, both sides have gotten to a point where it doesn't work. Now we have to find the middle way now. Indeed. Yeah.

That's how I see it. Yeah. Yeah, I love it, man. That's a good spot to maybe leave it up. But you know what, Ben? First off, I got a new segment that I'm doing. And you are the first person to do it, my friend. Uh-oh, love to be a guinea pig.

Yes, here we go. So you have 44 seconds to tell me a story about Hawaii. It can be your definition. It can be something that happened. It could be an idea. But your time begins now. Okay. Hawaii, Hawaii is some islands in the sea.

I guess I'll take it back to a distant place where there is evidence that Hawaii used to be a part of the continent of Lumuria or Mu, depending on where you're looking, and stretched all the way from Hawaii down to Easter Island and then to the west to Madagascar. And that's why there's a very interesting thing with lemurs in like those southern regions and different species of monkeys on Hawaii. different insects and whatnot as well. So yeah, wonderful, beautiful place. Can't wait to come visit George, but that's my take on Hawaii. I love it, man.

Thank you for playing a part, man. I appreciate it. Before I let you go, my friend, what do you got coming up? Where can people find you? What are you excited about? Benjamin C.George.com for all my shenanigans. Not too much coming up. I'm just working on a lot of private stuff right now.

But I'll be hopping on podcasts here and there. and releasing some things here and there. Maybe my Twitter account will become powered by an AI. So we'll see about that. So yeah, just excited to keep on working on stuff, keep on having great conversations and watching a world change for a little bit better, even if it's just, you know, one community and small place at a time.

I love it, man. I love talking to you, brother. And it's always a great time. And we'll get back on. We'll start getting on a more regular case, man. Everybody go down, check out the links down there. Reach out, get your free book from me. Benjamin C. George, it's a fascinating read. It'll help you see the world without any

absolute, which I think is a framework for life. And I know that Ben does too. That's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you have a wonderful day. Aloha.